Last Month Was the Hottest June Recorded Worldwide, Figures ShowUS government climate data suggests 2010 on course to be warmest year since records began

by John Vidal

Last month was the hottest June ever recorded worldwide and the fourth consecutive month that the combined global land and sea temperature records have been broken, according to the US government's climate data centre.

[Residents of the Brooklyn borough of New York City use a fire hydrant to cool off on one of the hottest days of the year July 6, 2010. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)]Residents of the Brooklyn borough of New York City use a fire hydrant to cool off on one of the hottest days of the year July 6, 2010. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)The figures released last night by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) suggest that 2010 is now on course to be the warmest year since records began in 1880.

The trend to a warmer world is now incontrovertible. According to NOAA, June was the 304th consecutive month with a combined global land and surface temperature above the 20th-century average. The last month with below-average temperatures was February 1985. Each of the 10 warmest average global temperatures recorded since 1880 have occurred in the last 15 years with the previous warmest first half of a year in 1998.

Temperature anomalies included Spain, which experienced its coolest June temperature since 1997, and Guizhou in southern China, which had its coolest June on record. According to Beijing Climate Center, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, and Jilin experienced their warmest June since their records began in 1951.

Scientists expressed surprise that the June land surface temperature exceeded the previous record by 0.11C (0.20F). "This large difference over land contributed strongly to the overall global land and ocean temperature anomaly", said John Leslie, a spokesman for NOAA.

Seperate satellite data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that the extent of sea ice in the Arctic was at its lowest for any June since satellite records started in 1979. The icy skin over the Arctic Ocean grows each winter and shrinks in summer, reaching its yearly low point in September. The monthly average for June 2010 was 10.87 km sq. The ice was declining an average of 88,000 sq km per day in June.

In a further sign of a warming world, the Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier, one of the largest in Greenland, lost a 2.7-square mile chunk of ice between 6-7 July one of the largest single losses to a glacier ever recorded.http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/07/16-1

As the nation swelters through what will likely be one of the hottest months in U.S. history, a new report released today by federal government scientists says that the decade from 2000-2009 was the Earth's warmest on record.

Global weather records go back to 1880.

The new climate report, entitled the 2009 State of the Climate, also states that "global warming is undeniable."

Each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the decade before, it reports. At the time, the 1980 was the hottest decade on record. In the 1990s, every year was warmer than the average of the previous decade. And the 2000s were warmer still.

Specifically, the decade of the 2000s had a surface global temperature that was 0.96°F above the long-term (20th century) average. This shattered the 1990s value of 0.65°F above average, according to Thomas C. Patterson, chief scientist at the National Climatic Data Center.

The report was released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and published as a supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

The report focused on 10 indicators of a warming world, seven which are increasing and three declining. Rising over the decades are average air temperature, the ratio of water vapor to air, ocean heat content, sea-surface temperature, sea level, air temperature over the ocean and air temperature over land.

Indicators that are declining are snow cover, glaciers and sea ice.

"The temperature increase of one degree Fahrenheit over the past 50 years may seem small, but it has already altered our planet," said Deke Arndt, co-editor of the report and chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch of the data center.

"Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying and heat waves are more common," he says.

Last month was the warmest June on record and this year has had the warmest average temperature for January-June since record keeping began, NOAA reported last week.